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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28598994">everyone wants a battlefield</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/beneathyourbravery/pseuds/beneathyourbravery'>beneathyourbravery</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>95s and 96s are the same age, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Character Development, Coming of Age, Drinking Games, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings Realization, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Literary Clichés, M/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Rivalry, Summer, Texting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:40:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28598994</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/beneathyourbravery/pseuds/beneathyourbravery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yoon Jeonghan has never been Doyoung’s friend. They could call each other rivals once, maybe, when they were little enough to ignore the magnitude of said word; strangers at most, later, crossing paths in a foreign city and not daring to even say hello, pointless resentment rotting away at some hidden corner of their chests, everlasting as the kiss of a fire flame.”</p><hr/><p>Or: Jeonghan and Doyoung have quite a history of rivalry of their own—but when summer arrives to their mountain town lost in the middle of nowhere, the breeze and the river flow bring along a new beginning of some sorts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Yoon Jeonghan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>everyone wants a battlefield</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            Anonymous in the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2">SVTRarePairFest2</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Welcome to my contribution to the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2/works">Seventeen Rare Pair Fest</a> and to the fic which might as well be the most exciting crossover of my life ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜ There is a great amount of my own thoughts and feelings poured into this story, and I’m glad I can confidently say that I'm super happy with how it turned out in the end.</p><p>Before heading into the story itself, I would like to thank the person who submitted this prompt for giving me the inspiration and the opportunity to explore a setting I'd been dying to write about. Jeonghan is my main ult bias but I had never written him as a main character before this fic, and so getting to explore his character throughout this story has been an experience I’ve enjoyed greatly. Also, Seventeen and NCT are my ult groups, and Doyoung is one of the members I like the most, so creating this little universe in which they coexist as they do has been so much fun!!!!! I sincerely hope to have been up to your expectations and that you'll like the end result ♡</p><p>Last, but definitely not least, here is a shoutout to my source of inspiration for this fic, all of whom will (hopefully) never know this story exists: the town in which I lived during almost 14 years of my life and all the people I left there—my dearest friends who I still see often and that have never ever left my side, and the ones who are and were not my friends but will forever stay a part of me if only because I grew up with them.</p><p>Now sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy !!!!</p><p>  <strong>Prompt:</strong></p><p>Doyoung and Jeonghan's multiple, rival glow ups over the years. They've always been hot but this is getting ridiculous.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>People like to think war means something.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What can you learn from your opponent? More than you think.</em>
</p><p>Richard Siken — <em>Detail of the Fire</em></p><p> </p><p>“Hey,” Johnny calls out, and there’s a smile already forming around the rim of his beer jar, white foam staining his upper lip when he takes a long sip before shaking his head with a disbelieving chuckle, “do you remember that time when we were kids and Kwon Soonyoung took a sip of pink watercolor water cause he thought it would taste of strawberries?”</p><p>The inside of the pub in which they sit is buzzing with the kind of atmosphere that you can only really taste during the weekends in a town like theirs—a big one in comparison to the ones that surround it, but where there is not nearly enough people to fill restaurants and nightclubs on the regular nevertheless, and no college to attract young students to liven up the ambient; a place more reserved to families, full of kids and teens growing into young adults that always seem more destined to leave their home than to anything else in the world.</p><p>Doyoung, just like most of his friends, has always been one of those kids. ‘<em>Where are you gonna study</em>,’ every adult ever would ask, cause it was a given he would have to leave his town if he wanted to make it somewhere; because opportunities awaited far from the mountains and the wheat fields surrounding the place in which he grew up, away from the park in which he learnt how to ride a bike for the first time and the river where his father taught him how to swim.</p><p>And college is fun, Doyoung will admit. It feels nice to kind of build a life of his own all by himself, in a place where he could start fresh from scratch and make new friends that he knows by now are forever, where he opened his mind to new horizons and chances and possibilities he hadn’t believed to even <em>exist</em> before. But when summer comes, every year round just like it did this time—the Sun heating up soft skin with a stronger caress and the warm breeze blowing gentle through tree leaves damping clothes with sweat—, there’s always a familiar kind of excitement bubbling inside Doyoung’s chest at the prospect of returning <em>home</em>, where his family awaits and his friends will finally reunite again after spring break to remind him of how utterly fun being together has always been.</p><p>“Yeah, he only did it cause Yoon Jeonghan told him it would <em>probably</em> taste like it,” Ten giggles, paper straw making the ice cubes in his orange mixed drink swirl and clink against glass, and he leans back into the bench where he’s sitting next to Kun before taking a long sip.</p><p>The sound of the name alone sets Doyoung on alert, thigh almost kicking up where it rests underneath the dark wooden table next to Taeyong’s. His best friend suppresses a small snort against the back of his hand, eyes shining with the glint that comes from knowing someone all too well, to the point where words do not need to be shared to know what’s going through each other’s mind.</p><p> </p><p>When Doyoung thinks back to kindergarten days, there’s one memory flashing bright on the front of his mind; a sort of inflexion point in his life, he would dare say, if only he hadn’t been a four year old kid back then.</p><p>In his memory, the spring breeze carries the softest hint of a floral scent across the schoolyard, cherry blossoms falling from their branches in a slow, pink shower that’s never ceased to amaze him. There’s a bunch of kids running around the playground, flower crowns still placed atop the heads of those that have not thrown them away yet, the <em>Spring Welcome Party</em> their school held every year long forgotten as they got lost in between games of tag and hide and seek.</p><p>Doyoung wasn’t playing any game of that kind that day, and certainly not because he didn’t want to. No, the kids from his class had simply come up with a different idea to spend the little time they had left before their parents came to pick them up, and Doyoung would always rather stick to his friends than go play with boys he did not know at all.</p><p>And so that’s how he’d ended up holding one of the flowers their teachers had given away to them after a short queue at the school’s front door—a pretty red rose with no thorns that smelt of harboring chaos, and the instructions given by one of the girls in his class resonating clear inside his little head.</p><p>
  <em>“Give your flower to the one you think is the prettiest person in the class!”</em>
</p><p>Doyoung had blushed when he’d first heard the words, because,<em> what?</em> Calling people pretty and giving them flowers is <em>flirting</em>! How is that allowed? But then, when only giggles bubbled out of his friends’ mouths and they started gushing about who would get a flower, Doyoung forgot about it all and decided that he would give it to Lee Taeyong. After all, they were best friends, and who better than <em>his most favorite person in the world</em> to receive his rose?</p><p>And so Doyoung followed suit with his plan, gave Taeyong his rose and received his peony back in return, <em>Doie you’re the best!</em>, <em>Yongie you’re the prettiest!</em>, and he’d believed that to be it. It wasn’t like any girl was going to give him a flower, when he wasn’t the tallest kid in the class and his drawings rarely made it to the wall where the best colored ones were hung, but that was fine because Taeyong got plenty of them and his cheeks glowed as pink as some of the flowers did.</p><p>But then, in the strangest turn of events, Yoon Jeonghan walked up to him from behind and tapped his shoulder to make Doyoung turn around. His little arms were struggling to carry the insane amount of flowers he’d received, one of them tucked behind his ear, where the tips of his bowl cut—pretty similar to Doyoung’s—brushed against it; flower crown still on his head, his eyes full of mischief as he stared at him.</p><p>“What?” Doyoung asked, looking at him a little strangely because he and Jeonghan had never really played or sat together at school. Truly, the only thing he knew about him is that they always, <em>always</em> ran towards the same bunny plushie when playtime was allowed in class, and so he really could not figure out what Jeonghan would want out of him right at that moment.</p><p>“Kim Doyoung,” Jeonghan announced proudly, “I want to give you my flower.”</p><p>Doyoung furrowed his eyebrows in confusion for a second, his grip around Taeyong’s peony tightening because he and Jeonghan were not <em>friends</em>, so why would he give him his flower? But then, after three seconds lost in deep thought, he figured it all out, and a wide smile broke on his face.</p><p>“Me?” he giggled, cheeks tinting a soft hue of red. “Do you think I’m the prettiest boy in the class?”</p><p>Except.</p><p>“<em>Second</em> prettiest,” Jeonghan had grinned, holding out his pastel purple dyed rose for Doyoung to pick, “<em>I</em> am the prettiest one.”</p><p>And Doyoung—he’d simply taken the flower and stared confusedly as Jeonghan walked away, rushing towards Choi Seungheol and Joshua Hong and sharing most of the flowers he’d received with them; a purple rose he took back home to his mom, giving it to her as he told her,</p><p>“Yoon Jeonghan is silly,” a pout tugging at his lips, “<em>You</em> can’t be the prettiest kid in the class! It has to be someone else!”</p><p>Something in the world had probably shifted in that moment, entangling Doyoung’s fated path with Yoon Jeonghan’s and setting on stone what would later come to be one of the few constants in his existence—the everlasting presence of the other in his life, despite the turns and twists of destiny, always there as if driving Doyoung crazy was Jeonghan’s only purpose.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>-young</em>? Are you listening?” Johnny’s teasing voice is what pulls Doyoung out of his trance, and he blinks his eyes as if the gesture would help to clear the nostalgic fog that’s clouded his mind for the past few moments.</p><p>“Huh?” Doyoung turns his head in Johnny’s direction at the sound of his name, and he finds him with his chin hooked on Taeyong’s shoulder where he sits next to him, a mischievous glint in his eye. The shadow of confusion painted over his face must look absolutely hilarious, for all of his friends burst out laughing on the exact second he looks around their table, “What? What’s so funny?”</p><p>The way the smirk stretching across Ten’s lips tells him they must all be thinking the same thing makes Doyoung’s blood boil—he does <em>not</em> like to be teased, especially not when it’s probably about the mention of Yoon Jeonghan in their conversation, and he’s so ready to jump to defend himself that he almost doesn’t realise Yuta returning to their table and squeezing himself next to Ten.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Yuta asks, smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he shrugs off his leather jacket—even in early summer, the nights at their town tend to lean towards the colder side more often than not.</p><p>“Oh, it’s nothing,” Kun says from Ten’s other side, and Doyoung narrows his eyes at him in suspicion, “How was your smoke?”</p><p>“Good,” Yuta replies simply, fishing his cigarette box out of the front pocket of his jeans and leaving it to rest atop the table, “Choi Seungcheol was outside too. He and his friends are also celebrating their yearly summer reunion tonight.”</p><p>“Choi Seungcheol?” Taeyong pipes up, eyes wide in fake curiosity as his hand secretly grips Doyoung’s thigh, “So they’re all here?”</p><p>“Yup,” Yuta grins, and it’s pointedly directed at Doyoung this time. Doyoung’s hands tremble and he cannot bring himself to stop them. “Yoon Jeonghan arrived this morning, just like our Doyoungie.”</p><p>Doyoung can feel five pairs of eyes fixed on him the moment the sentence is out in the open, and he sends a silent prayer begging for his cheeks not to flush bright red.</p><p>“He probably took the same train as me,” Doyoung shrugs, and it comes off so forcefully nonchalant that it makes him internally cringe, “It was the cheapest ride.”</p><p>His cheeks tint pink, nevertheless.</p><p> </p><p>Jeonghan did. Doyoung saw him at the platform while he waited for the train, sitting on top of his propped up suitcase with sunglasses on and his caramel hair swaying with the wind, looking too good for someone who had to wake up in the crack of dawn to get from the college’s dorms to the station in time. Doyoung only knew that because he’d had to do the same thing to get there from the apartment he shares with Jaehyun, Jungwoo and Sicheng, and he’d been thankful to the mask covering half of his own face for giving him an excuse not to talk to Jeonghan.</p><p>It’s not that they don’t get along—that <em>used to</em> be the issue, back when they were still in school, but it’s definitely not anymore.</p><p>The thing with Yoon Jeonghan these days is more related to the familiarity that comes with treating someone in a certain way despite the circumstances and the passing of time. Doyoung never really got to be his <em>friend</em> when they were both still living in their town, attending the same school and going out to the same places on the same days because choices had always been extremely limited at home, so why would he act as if they were actually close now just because they decided to attend the same university in the same city hours away from home?</p><p>Taeyong always says he’s just making up excuses. <em>“You fight him because you like him,”</em> he’s been telling him since primary school, and Doyoung loves him to death but would strangle him without a second thought every time he speaks those seven damned words.</p><p>Because he doesn’t like Yoon Jeonghan—insanely pretty, threateningly intelligent, incredibly charming Yoon Jeonghan—, and definitely <em>not</em> in the way his friends have taken a liking to suggest; it’s just that his presence in Doyoung’s life has been so constant that he’s sort of intrigued as to when it is finally going to stop, if the moment will ever come, how it will happen to be.</p><p> </p><p>“He spaced out again,” Ten giggles, and Doyoung’s brain must perceive the sound as a threat because it instantly activates his flight response.</p><p>“I didn’t!” Doyoung whines, and Taeyong pats his thigh and presses a big smooch to his cheek, “Seriously, stop it.”</p><p>“Another round?” Johnny asks, peacemaker where war is always raging on, and the collective ‘<em>yes</em>’ that echoes across the old pub’s walls must be one of the few things all of them will always agree on.</p><p> </p><p>Johnny is not alone when he comes back to the table. He’s tall enough to stand out from the small crowd that gathered in this one pub tonight, somehow managing to carry six drinks in his arms—beers for Kun, Yuta and himself, two glasses of wine for Taeyong and Doyoung and Ten’s cocktail of choice tonight—all the while smiling as bright as the Sun itself to whatever it is that Joshua Hong is talking to him about.</p><p>Joshua Hong, as in Yoon Jeonghan’s very best friend. Doyoung aches to grab the glass of wine from Johnny’s hand and swallow it all down in one gulp.</p><p>“Hey!” Joshua greets their table, eyes closed into crescent moons with the curve of his smile, “It’s good to see you all here again! Man, it feels like forever since I last saw this place this packed.”</p><p>“It’s good to see you too,” Taeyong smiles back at him, gentle as always, and Doyoung mirrors his gesture and prays for the conversation to be over soon—he’s not quite sure he wants to know where the night is going to be headed towards if it doesn’t, “Are you staying here for the summer this time? I remember you going back to America last year.”</p><p>Joshua Hong is a nice guy—at least that’s what Doyoung thinks, given the little contact he’s had with him during the last few years. They attended the same primary and high school, like most kids in their town did because it wasn’t really big enough for there to be many different places to choose from, and even if they were never really friends Joshua has always been nice to him.</p><p>It still makes Doyoung’s stomach feel funny to be talking to him, though—time goes by for everyone all the same, but every time he comes back home to see the people he grew up with he is reminded of the only life he used to know once, and his skin feels prickly when he lets his mind wander through endless thoughts of how fast everything can change.</p><p>“Ah, I was just talking to Johnny about it!” Joshua claps his hands once, politeness permanently embedded into his tone, “I might go back in August, but definitely not yet. Jeonghan just came back from uni today, and I wanna make the most out of the few months we all get to be together here, you know.”</p><p>Doyoung has tried to erase most of what happened during his school years from his mind, ever so adamant on moving on and growing into a better version of himself that he believed it was a given that he should leave his past behind. He’s tried, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the day Yoon Jeonghan walked into class at sixteen with his hand clasped in between Joshua’s own, coy smile on his lips after stealing a kiss from the other’s mouth.</p><p>They’re just best friends now, like they’d always been, their dating adventure so short-lived that most people in town have probably already forgotten about it.</p><p>Doyoung hasn’t, but that’s quite his personal choice. His rivalry with Jeonghan used to run way too deep, back then.</p><p>“Yeah, Seungcheol mentioned it had been a while since you were all here,” Yuta pipes up, reclined in his seat, “It’s the same for us, actually. Doyoungie just got here today as well.”</p><p>Doyoung smiles bashfully under the attention Yuta’s words direct towards him, and he nods his head right as Taeyong passes him one of the wine glasses Johnny brought.</p><p>“Yeah, I took the morning train. It’s good to be back for summer, it reminds me of when we were still kids,” he grins, and Ten and Kun hum contently in agreement.</p><p>“It does, doesn’t it?” Joshua smiles back, “oh, I think my friends are coming over to say hello too… Actually, do you mind if we sit with you for a while? We could catch up a little, it’s really been so long since we last met like this.”</p><p>“Dude, for sure,” Johnny laughs, pressing himself closer to Taeyong’s side—and thus squishing him against Doyoung—as if it weren’t physically impossible to create some free space in the small bench the three of them are sitting on, “It’ll be fun! We can remember the old times.”</p><p>“Hello!” Yoon Jeonghan’s sticky sweet voice calls out the second he’s got his arms wrapped around Joshua’s middle from behind; Kwon Soonyoung, Lee Jihoon and Wen Junhui echoing the greeting as they approach their table too, Seungcheol already picking up where he’d left his conversation with Yuta before, “We’re all here! How cool.”</p><p>Doyoung swallows thickly and plasters on his most charming smile.</p><p>Taeyong giggles.</p><p>Summer’s officially started tonight.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>The day is hot and humid in an eerie sort of way for a town lost in the middle of the mountains, hours away from the sea.</p><p>When he was little, Jeonghan always found it curious how a lot of kids from his class would pack their bags when the school year ended and leave to spend summer with their families in cities by the shore, where the sea becomes wild with the force of the blowing wind and skin feels sticky with the cliché combination of salt water and sand.</p><p>Every year, when September came round again after long months of vacation that passed by in the blink of an eye for a Jeonghan that was too curious and too energetic for his young age, Jisoo would always run towards him on the first day of school, overexcited to finally meet with his very best friend after months apart; and he would always tell Jeonghan about Los Angeles burning sun and the waves on Santa Monica beach, his Korean always returning home tinted with a foreign accent Jeonghan came to love if only because it made him able to recognise Jisoo anywhere in the world.</p><p>And every year, when Jisoo would hold Jeonghan’s hand in between his own and ask, the sparkle in his eyes a telltale of his curiosity, <em>“how was summer for you?”</em>, the story Jeonghan told him is the same he would tell if he were asked about it now.</p><p>Summer for Jeonghan has always meant home, with both its good and its bad. It is something sacred, reserved for his friends and his family and his town until the bitterness of not having anything new left to do after two weeks settles deep in his chest and makes him want to scream. Summer is holy rest and damned monotony, which tend to make habit out of the confused ache of his heart—the one that comes from the unpleasant mix of the comforting feeling of returning home and the burning need of getting out of his cage, a wild creature longing to be free.</p><p>Summer for Jeonghan has always gone something like this: Seungcheol rings his bell most mornings half an hour after breakfast, waits for him to grab his bike and then they ride together until they gather their whole group—Jihoon, Jisoo if he’s not in America, Junhui and Soonyoung—, and sometimes they go to the river and sometimes they go to the pool, fresh cold water tasting of sweet relief from a sun that burns too bright for a place that’s more built to endure the snowing winter months than the dampening heat July often comes with.</p><p>Jeonghan is twenty-two now, more used to riding the subway in his college city than any other means of transport these days, but today he still takes out his bike from the garage and races Seungcheol to see who can make it to the local pool first, streets lined by bright green trees watching them pass as if time had stopped itself years ago. Jisoo and Jihoon laugh loud and warm, sounds of pure delight, Junhui takes his hands off the handles to clap and Soonyoung uses one to record the whole ordeal on his phone; their first summer adventure, as old as themselves and still as exciting as it was at the start.</p><p>“I don’t wanna sit in the sun,” Jihoon claims when they finally arrive, bikes parked outside and Jeonghan the rightful winner of the race even if Seungcheol cries he tried to get in his way to make him slow down on purpose.</p><p>“I see a good spot over there!” Soonyoung grins, already strolling towards the empty patch of grass right by one of the old trees that cast shadow over the pool enclosure. Jeonghan smiles and follows him, aching to just jump into the pool to shy away the heat clinging to his skin, and he’s laying out his towel on the grass when Soonyoung exclaims, ever so happily, “oh, Doyoung! Hey!”</p><p>Jeonghan’s got his back turned to the direction Soonyoung is waving towards now, but he lifts an incredulous eyebrow at the sound of the name and the gesture makes Jisoo let out a little laugh.</p><p>“Sometimes I forget they’re friends,” Jeonghan chuckles with a shake of his head, and he knows Junhui has already probably hurried to greet Qian Kun as well, “it doesn’t suit them.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Jisoo teases, as if he hadn’t been living inside Jeonghan’s brain to know by heart every single one of his thoughts for the past twenty years. “Soonyoung is friends with everyone.”</p><p>“Yeah, but Kim Doyoung isn’t,” Jeonghan shrugs, the name coming out in a half-whisper that he knows Jisoo hears anyways, “he doesn’t even say hi to me when we cross paths in uni. We were in the same class in school for thirteen years!”</p><p>“You don’t say hi to him either,” Jisoo says, already taking off his shirt, “maybe that could be a good place to start.”</p><p>“To start what?” Jeonghan’s own shirt is damp with sweat. He grimaces and tosses it onto the towel, eyes already looking for a good spot of the pool to jump into.</p><p>“Being friends.”</p><p>Jeonghan laughs and runs towards the water.</p><p>And he jumps.</p><p> </p><p>Jeonghan’s always had a thing for winning, whatever the competition or the means it takes to win, and it is something all of his friends know about.</p><p>Back in primary school, when homework still consisted in practicing calligraphy and spelling unlike what the essays at college now require from him, Jeonghan would always try to be the first one to finish the tasks assigned to do in class. He remembers, albeit with a little bit of shame now, how he would rush to write down his lines as fast as he could, pencil digging way too hard on graph paper and teeth gritted together in concentration; how proud he’d feel whenever he found a pattern that allowed him to write a little bit faster, jumping from line to line and feeling like the smartest of thieves for finding a way to be the best that no one else would ever think of. He remembers, too, how Kim Doyoung would always try to challenge him because he too wanted to be the one to finish first; how outraged he’d be whenever he caught Jeonghan skipping lines or writing top to bottom instead of left to right, and how he’d try to knock Jeonghan’s elbow to get him to falter in his traces.</p><p>Football too was something Jeonghan’s always taken pride in being good at. He used to play as a striker, whenever his class decided to play a quick match during rest time in secondary school, and he still laughs when he remembers how good it felt to score a goal—the adrenaline that shot up his spine when his classmates ran to him to congratulate him, and how Doyoung—always the goalie for the other team—would get so frustrated if Jeonghan used the help of his hand to push the ball into the net.</p><p>“Why do you cheat so much!” Doyoung would scream, annoyed all the way to hell, and Jeonghan would pretend to know nothing as he ran back to his side of the field with Seungcheol.</p><p>It was an odd kind of rivalry they had, back then, when they were still kids that claimed not to be able to stand each other yet sat together in class. Sometimes Jeonghan still wonders if things could have been different, if Doyoung had ever tried to be his friend and not just to be better than him—but then again, Jisoo always says that Jeonghan just loved their constant game of push and pull a little too much.</p><p>It’s been years since they last fought. Entering high school ended up making their friend groups drift away, and even though they attend the same university and even have friends in common back there now, even though they sat on the same table at the town’s pub last night, their friends mingling together like powder cocoa in warm milk, Jeonghan doesn’t think he’s shared more than five words with Kim Doyoung in the last eight years.</p><p>Not that he wants to—it’s just that it is a little bit awkward when they cross paths in their campus and don’t even say hi to each other, but Jeonghan doesn’t dwell on it too much.</p><p>They don’t hate each other, even if they used to claim they <em>did</em> when they were in school, even if at one point in his life Jeonghan will admit to have done many, many things just to prove himself better than Doyoung. They’re just not made to be friends, and it’s all fine.</p><p>Jisoo should understand it but he refuses to, and it just makes Jeonghan’s summers a little bit more difficult than he would like to.</p><p> </p><p>“Yah, Yoon Jeonghan,” Soonyoung’s hand throwing water at his face pulls him out of his thoughts, and Jeonghan instinctively splashes him back because, well. He’s just very competitive. “You weren’t listening to us!”</p><p>“Jun is literally floating away on his back, what am I supposed to be listening to?” Jeonghan shoots back, and Junhui whines as the sound of his name sets him off balance and prompts him to swim back into the circle their friend group is making into the pool water.</p><p>“We were talking about where we should drink before going out on Saturday,” Seungcheol says with a fond roll of his eyes—for as much as he likes to antagonize Jeonghan, but they truly love each other to death—, “because all our parents will be home then. Can we go to yours?”</p><p>“Are we really not allowed to drink in the park anymore? Nothing’s been the same since they prohibited it,” Jeonghan pouts, swimming across their circle to wrap his arms around Jisoo’s neck and his legs around his waist from behind until he’s clinging to his back. Then, after a moment of thought, he adds with a grimace, “My parents are gonna be home, and I think my brother’s bringing his friends over too, so… I don’t know where we can go.”</p><p>“Hyung! Why are you talking about me behind my back?” Seungkwan’s whine comes from behind Jeonghan’s own back, and he laughs loudly while Jisoo takes a ninety-degrees turn until they’re both facing his younger brother. “I already told mom about my friends coming, you don’t get to make her change her mind this time!”</p><p>“Hello, Seungkwan,” Jisoo giggles, waving at him with the hand he’s not using to keep Jeonghan’s leg from slipping from around his middle, “Did Hansol come with you? I didn’t get to see him this morning, he’d already left when I woke up.”</p><p>“Yeah, he’s playing cards with Jeno and the rest over there,” Seungkwan points with his finger at a far corner of the pool. Outside the water, under the shadow provided by another ancient tree, Hansol—Jisoo’s brother—and all of his friends are piled up on their towels apparently playing a game of cards. “I lost the first round, so I decided to come see my <em>beloved</em> brother, and when I swim to him what do I hear? That he’s talking about me!”</p><p>“I just said we can’t drink at home tonight because you’ll be there!” Jeonghan whines, and it draws the attention of the rest of his friends, for they all burst out laughing at their antics—they’ve always been too fond of Seungkwan.</p><p>Most of them have younger brothers, and while their town has always been big enough for many different friend groups to exist—coincidences never happening by chance in a closed off place where everyone knows about each other’s whatabouts, Jeonghan’s prison and Jeonghan’s safest place on Earth—, it still feels warming on the heart to see that all of them ended up making a group of their own. Seungkwan,  Hansol, Chenle—Junhui’s brother— and Chan—Soonyoung’s—make a pretty good team together, and Jeonghan adores the fact that it’s his closest friends’ siblings that make his own the happiest.</p><p>There’s more kids in their group, too—Johnny Suh’s brother, Mark; Lee Taeyong’s, Donghyuck; Qian Kun’s, Renjun; Jisung and his older brother Jaemin, both of which are a little too young for Jeonghan to know well; and the one Jeonghan knows to be Kim Doyoung’s younger sibling, Jeno, his sweetness an astonishing contrast to his hyung’s cold demeanor—, teenagers that Jeonghan is too fond of even if he’s not that close with their brothers anymore.</p><p>“Well, no, you can’t! We’re all having dinner and then spending the night home. Might even have a sleepover!” Seungkwan grins.</p><p>“Hansol’s actually already told mom about it, I think,” Jisoo suddenly remembers, and it pushes a sigh out of Jeonghan’s chest, “We’ll have to think about what to do.”</p><p>“Why don’t you go to the park to drink? Haven’t you like, been doing that forever?” Hansol pipes up, emerging from the water right beside Seungkwan and startling him with his sudden appearance, “Oh, did I scare you? Sorry!”</p><p>Jeonghan doesn’t see it from where he is perched on Jisoo’s back, but he knows that there’s a smile tugging at the corners of his best friend’s lips, a mirror to his own, at the sight their siblings make together. It tugs at some hidden part of Jeonghan’s heart, leaves on his mouth the bittersweet aftertaste of nostalgia swirling together with the soft caress of happiness that touches his soul, because seeing two best friends so in love with each other is something Jeonghan always wanted for himself but never really got to have.</p><p>Some things, he’s learnt with time, are just not meant to happen. That, too, he’s learnt to live with.</p><p>“They prohibited it like, two summers ago,” Jihoon tells him from where he’s, for some reason, sitting on Seungcheol’s shoulders. “Ah, young kids these days, you will never know what that was like.”</p><p>“We go to the park most nights, though. We just don’t drink,” Seungkwan adds, already clinging to Hansol’s back like it’s his rightful place, “Well. Maybe we do, sometimes. Don’t tell mom.”</p><p>“Mom knows,” Jeonghan rolls his eyes, “I no longer live home, she knows all the wine stashed in the cabinet isn’t mine anymore.”</p><p>“We’ve all been seventeen wanting to get drunk, Seungkwan!” Soonyoung laughs, “As long as you’re careful not to get caught… It really sucks that they won’t let us drink outside anymore.”</p><p>“Which brings us back to where we were before… where the fuck are we drinking tonight?” Seungcheol groans.</p><p>Summers used to be easier when he was younger, Jeonghan decides, but still being together with his friends after a lifetime—it makes all the hussle worth it every time.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>The thing with living with expectations is that you’re doomed to disappointment.</p><p>Doyoung learns this first hand when he’s ten years old in primary school, on the first day of class after Christmas break. That year, his favourite present out of all the ones he found underneath the Christmas tree is a brand new shiny grey <em>GameBoy Advance SP</em> he’d been begging for for months prior to the holiday. He’d asked his parents for it many, many times, ‘<em>I got a ten out of ten in my English exam, do you think Santa will bring it for me?’</em>, a dialogue he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget if only for the many iterations of it he’d repeated during the months building up to Christmas Eve. And so, when the day to bring your favourite toy to school after break is over arrives, Doyoung doesn’t doubt it not even for a second: he asks his mom to pack his new <em>GameBoy </em>into his bag and pulls it out proudly when his teacher says playtime can start, already believing himself to be the luckiest out of all the kids in his class.</p><p>But as always, as if fate had already set in stone the very reason why Doyoung would one day drive himself up a wall, Yoon Jeonghan pulls out the exact same <em>GameBoy</em>, except for the fact that his was <em>pink</em>. Pink, as in Doyoung’s favourite color. Jealousy and uncalled for rage; they both tasted bitter on the back of his tongue, then.</p><p>It goes the other way around in high school: he graduates top of his class, Yoon Jeonghan a close second, but victory doesn’t taste half as sweet as he’d believed it would, for their rivalry was already dead by then; competition turned into something more distant, no more shared dreams to compare—<em>grow into your own person, be the best for yourself, you and I no longer exist in the same realm so it does not matter anymore</em>.</p><p>By now, Doyoung knows better than to have any expectations, for they bring nothing good—a devil wiser from experience than from evil itself, disappointment grown into a fear too tricky for him to handle over the last few years.</p><p>Still, against his better judgement, he’s got them for tonight.</p><p>He expects the night to <em>utterly and absolutely suck</em>, despite it being the very first night he’s going to be partying with his friends this summer. As always, Doyoung finds with a badly concealed grimace, Yoon Jeonghan is to blame for his sour mood.</p><p>“Did we really forget to buy ice <em>again</em>?” Lee Jihoon groans from the kitchen, head almost pushed inside the freezer.</p><p>“I just said Jeonghan is bringing it!” Seungcheol replies a little too cheerfully before returning to his conversation with Yuta. They’ve been close ever since they got put into the same class in high school, and Doyoung knows to appreciate what Seungcheol has done for his friend. He’s not sure where Yuta would be now, if there hadn’t been enough of them to steer him back into the right path.</p><p>“Yah, Doie,” Taeyong huffs, an elbow to the ribs Doyoung receives for his visible reaction at the sound of the cursed name, “behave, will you? Don’t be so uptight. It’s gonna be all fine.”</p><p><em>All fine</em> might be an overstatement. If anything, Doyoung would settle for mediocre—but at least Kwon Soonyoung is here, and so he’s got an ally on the other side of this cold war.</p><p> </p><p>The circumstances that have led Doyoung to this very moment, where he’s considering his life choices while he waits for <em>Yoon Jeonghan</em> to arrive in <em>Ten’s </em>living room, go a little like this—and for them he’s got no one to blame but his own big mouth and his loud, always-too-happy-to-ruin-Doyoung’s-life friends:</p><p>Kwon Soonyoung swims over to the far side of the pool, next to which Doyoung is trying to sunbathe while Ten and Taeyong do everything in their hands—namely, throw water at him every time he puts down his phone—to interrupt the false sense of calm he’s been trying to bring upon himself for the last half of an hour, and he asks the most innocent question he could have ever come up with.</p><p>“Hey, Doyoung-ah,” he calls out to him, and Johnny wraps his strong, <em>strong</em>—he’s been hitting the gym more than usual lately, Doyoung is not <em>blind</em>—arms around Taeyong’s middle and drags him away to where he can no longer pester Doyoung with his antics, “you’re going out tonight, right?”</p><p>It’s a <em>Saturday</em> in <em>summer</em>. Doyoung just came back home after months away. The doubt is almost offending.</p><p>“Yeah, you are too, right?” Doyoung asks in return, sitting up on his elbows so he can face Soonyoung better.</p><p>His is a friendship Doyoung cherishes, even if they don’t share friend groups nor talk all that much anymore. It is as simple as this: Soonyoung was the one right after him on the class list when they were in secondary school, which meant that they had to sit next to each other for every class for <em>four long years</em>, and during a time when Doyoung struggled the most with acceptance not just from others but from himself, Kwon Soonyoung had been overall a very nice person to sit next to.</p><p>Also, Doyoung’s little brother is real close to Soonyoung’s—he’s been to his house enough times to pick Jeno up from his hangouts with Chan that he could make his way over there with his eyes closed, and it’s just another little thing to add to the not-so-long list of things that tie them together; but in a town where you have heard mostly everything about every single person you cross paths with on the street, calling Kwon Soonyoung a friend felt treasuring. Doyoung decided a long time ago that not everything has to be so complicated.</p><p>“Yeah, man,” Soonyoung answers with a sigh that’s a little too sad for the situation, “where are you gonna drink?”</p><p>“At Ten’s, his parents are staying the night at their farm,” Doyoung blinks, “why?”</p><p>“Oh,” Soonyoung hums, “nothing, just curious. We don’t have any house free tonight, so I’m not sure what we’ll do. I miss the park, dude.”</p><p>Doyoung doesn’t have time to feel bad about having a place in which to drink tonight. Ten has, as always, his ear where his eyes are not—they’re too busy staring at Johnny’s muscles bulging to spare a glance at him and Soonyoung.</p><p>“Soonyoung!” Ten says, brighter than the Sun. Doyoung feels the threat crawling over his bare skin, “Come to my house! All of you! It’ll be fun to drink together, right?”</p><p>Soonyoung’s face lights up. Belatedly, Doyoung realises this was probably the answer he’d been looking for since the start.</p><p>It’s no secret that Ten and Soonyoung have history—one of rivalry at that, too, but restricted to the dance floors where they competed, each in one of the two most important dance schools in their region. Sacrifice for their passion was something they wore like a crown from a very young age, but where everyone had expected them to hate each other simply for dancing on different teams in competitions, they rejoiced in the fact that they shared the same dreams and simply became really good friends.</p><p>Good enough for Soonyoung to punch a kid in the face when he made fun of Ten for liking boys in the eighth grade—something Doyoung will forever be grateful to him for.</p><p>Good enough to pursue a professional dancing career together at the closest college to their town while working at the most renowned studio in their town.</p><p>Good enough for Ten to offer him to come to his house like he would to a brother—nothing asked in exchange, <em>this-place-is-my-safe-place</em>, childhood and other past adventures not really needing to be forced to be forgotten, sometimes.</p><p>In the distance, Taeyong squeals in delight, “yeah! Let’s drink together! Tell everyone!”, before Johnny dunks him under the water one more time.</p><p> </p><p>Which is how Doyoung finds himself like this: plastic tube glass held tightly in his hand, a little bit more than tipsy where he’s leaning against the cream colored wall of Ten’s hallway, slightly swaying on his feet as he waits for Yoon Jeonghan to exit the bathroom so he can enter himself.</p><p>Doyoung has a funny relationship with alcohol, he’s learnt over the course of his young-adulthood life: there are days where he will finish half a bottle of vodka by himself and feel absolutely <em>nothing</em>, and days where just one sip of a drink will have his eyesight going fuzzy around the edges and his tongue loosening up with suddenly found confidence.</p><p>Today is a day of the second kind, albeit in the best way possible; Taeyong’s been laughing for a while at the way he’s been blinking his eyes in futile attempts at clearing his vision, and Doyoung is enjoying himself so much that he doesn’t even get mad for it. Seungcheol tells him he’s lucky for being such a lightweight—“less money spent on drinks!”—, and Doyoung’s confession to having copied an answer from Jihoon’s English exam once in middle school has the room bursting out with laughter.</p><p>And so Doyoung is having fun—much more than he’s had in the last few months, despite college parties and outings with his friends back in the city—, and he feels powerful with it; confident in ways he lacks sometimes, when his brain works faster than he would like it to and doesn’t let him rejoice in the little things; when he makes himself believe returning home is not something he should crave, that independence is the key to finding his real self.</p><p>Yeah, he feels powerful with it—so much that when Yoon Jeonghan opens the bathroom’s door and squeals in surprise at finding Doyoung there, he does not ignore him nor make a face at him. No, he <em>smiles</em>, a wide, sincere smile that tugs at the corners of his lips and dimples his right cheek; and says, light-heartedly enough for Jeonghan not to take it as mockery,</p><p>“I’ve never told you, but I really, really liked your hair during first year of college.”</p><p>Kun always jokes that the timetable of Doyoung’s feud with Jeonghan can be explained in terms of hairstyles: standard dark brown bowl cuts when they were kids, so similar in their quest to success that it was almost ironic they failed to see just how much they resembled each other; dye fever when they started high school, growing hotter at the same pace they grew apart, Jeonghan’s bleached blonde growing locks an universe away from Doyoung’s jet black undercut, pointless resentment held at gunpoint every time they crossed paths on the hallways; Doyoung’s parted bangs and Jeonghan’s ponytail in university, long gone and replaced by stylish brown bangs now, the last stage of their very own war of independence—one that ends with armistice when they stop acknowledging each other, prettier than anyone would have ever guessed them both to turn out when they would return home covered in mud after playing in the snow back in town, likes on their Instagram posts they would no longer give enough importance to fight for.</p><p><em>Vanitas Vanitatis</em>, the constant need to be proven the best out of the rest, purpose lost on their own terrenal war.</p><p><em>“What a glow up, Doie”</em>, Taeyong always laughs when they look at old pictures of themselves, <em>“you’ve grown up hotter than me!”</em>.</p><p>That’s a blatant lie, but Doyoung will admit—he’s beautiful.</p><p>Yoon Jeonghan is, too, and so his tipsy brain decides he deserves to know.</p><p>Jeonghan blinks at him twice. “When I grew it long?”</p><p>“Yeah, man,” Doyoung grins, “it suited you so much. Really. I thought it was so cute.” Then, after a beat, “I probably should’ve told you back then. I’m just… shy. Sometimes, you know? But anyways, how is everything going? Oh, Seokmin told me he’s signing up for choir next year! You’re really close to him, right?”</p><p>Looking back in retrospect, Doyoung thinks Jeonghan should’ve run. Instead, he just giggles—a cute tiny sound that almost feels out of place, given their history—and starts talking to him.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>There’s an eerie sort of often indescribable feeling that comes with witnessing the greatest creations of nature. The latin poets used to call it <em>Locus Amoenus</em>; a place of paradisiac beauty, safety for the body, calm for the soul.</p><p>For Jeonghan, that place would be the river flowing down the mountains in between which his town is built—where grass fields and thick trees combine to frame the water current with their green and the Sun shines gentler over the skin, where the frenzy of the city is left so far away that it sounds unimaginable, the one place in the world he gets to call his home.</p><p><em>Vita Flumen</em>, the poets used to say, too—life flows like a river, and it’s in moments like these when he wonders if it might have been him who was putting pebbles on his own way all along. Leaving home, living on his own, becoming a better version of himself that’s often so unrecognisable that it just feels <em>wrong</em>; rejecting his roots and where he’s from, this place where he finds calm and remembers moments he should’ve never wanted to forget, it all might as well have been the starting point of his demise.</p><p>Sometimes he wonders, and it feels like a sign: stop trying so hard, there’s never so much to be had.</p><p>Thinking about it now, for as much as he has always liked it there, Jeonghan sees that it could have been no thing other than fate that led him to decide to walk the way to the river with Seungkwan on that humid Tuesday morning.</p><p>The drunken haze of the previous weekend is almost forgotten by now—a distant memory of swaying his hips to a sensual beat with his back pressed to Jisoo’s chest on Saturday night, laugh bubbling out of their lips at Jihoon’s scandalized face, and of going to the bar for drinks with Kim Doyoung while Lee Taeyong made out with Byun Baekhyung pressed against a wall at the back of the club, grumpily agreeing on how being single like they are sucks when their friends decide to put their tongue down other people’s throats.</p><p><em>Almost</em>, because Jeonghan might have been drunk when it happened, but he could never in a million years forget the strange feeling that filled up his chest with its foreign smoke while he talked to Doyoung. It shouldn’t be something that weird: they have friends in common, attend the same college, have known each other since they were three. It still is: Kim Doyoung is supposed to dislike him, not to think of him as <em>cute</em>, not to laugh in delight while they were dancing together waiting for the waiter to finish pouring their drinks, not to tell Jeonghan about <em>how fun it would be to go out together like this every night</em>.</p><p>In all honesty, Jeonghan is not sure Doyoung remembers any of what happened that night, because his words had started slurring together even before he finished his first glass of rum and coke and he is sure he wouldn’t have been so affectionate towards him if alcohol hadn’t been running through his veins. Still, when he catches sight of him sitting on the edge of the river, bare legs dipped into the water as he watches his brother Jeno, Taeyong’s brother Donghyuck and Na Jaemin throw water at each other in the close distance, Jeonghan finds himself starting to feel strangely nervous.</p><p>Navigating new situations—his life-long dream, still so out of reach even after years of practice, years of pretending, of talking in college about how <em>I hated living in my town, the city is where I really belong</em>. The trials for the soul: they don’t always end in full bloom.</p><p>“Jaemin! Jeno! Hyuck!” Seungkwan calls out loudly when he notices his friends already swimming in the water, and it disturbs the calm atmosphere so violently that Jeonghan almost closes his eyes with the force of his voice.</p><p>“Where’s Hansol?” Jeonghan asks his brother as they walk towards the spot where he can see Seungkwan’s friends’ things splayed out, where Kim Doyoung’s bag rests atop a neatly folded towel, “I thought you said he would come too.”</p><p>“He should be here soon, he went with Mark to get his bike fixed. I don’t think Joshua is coming, though,” Seungkwan says, “Hansol said he was going to… play tennis or something like that with Johnny Suh today.”</p><p>Jeonghan keeps in the sigh that threatens to spill from his lips, because Lee Taeyong is nowhere in sight and that can only mean one thing—he is going to have to be alone with Doyoung while their brothers enjoy themselves with their friends, and albeit it no longer sounds as insufferable as it would have a week ago, he is not so sure it is going to end up well when there’s no beer to nurse while they’re at it.</p><p>“Great,” is the only thing he says, and Seungkwan snorts and pats his shoulder in a way that’s far too condescending for a sixteen year old.</p><p>“It’ll be fine, hyung,” he says with a dramatic roll of his eyes, “Jeno’s brother is nice!”</p><p>“I know,” Jeonghan mumbles, running a hand through his hair after awkwardly waving at Doyoung when he catches him watching from afar, “we’ve just never really talked much.”</p><p>Seungkwan sighs and places down his bag, snarky remark probably already at the tip of his tongue—something about remembering old rivalries and stupid feuds—, but when Hansol arrives on his bike and gets down to go hug him hello, his embrace warmer than this very summer day, the kid forgets about everything.</p><p>Fondness makes its way inside Jeonghan’s chest and stays there as he watches them—echoes of a long lost life, all of the things he will never be allowed to have.</p><p> </p><p>Hansol and Seungkwan join Jeno, Jaemin, Mark Suh and Lee Donghyuck in the water, and Jeonghan busies himself with his phone for a total of three minutes before he feels like avoiding Doyoung like this for much longer is probably way more awkward than sitting by his side on the river’s edge.</p><p>“Hey,” he says as he walks down the slight slope of the field to sit next to him, oversized light white t-shirt still on and hanging loose over his trucks, “What’s up?”</p><p>Doyoung swings his feet into the water and doesn’t look at him when he sits, but he smiles at the sound of his voice and it’s confusing how much of a win it feels like for Jeonghan.</p><p>“Hey,” Doyoung says back, eyes fixed on the transparent water, pure this close to the river source, “water’s cold, but it’s nice. The kids have been trying to drag me in since we got here, but I’d rather sunbathe for a while first.”</p><p>Jeonghan hums in agreement, hardly succeeding to repress the shiver that runs down his spine when he pushes his legs into the water up to his calves. It feels like a sort of awakening, in more ways than the physical one, cold shock for his sluggish brain.</p><p>The river is home, and home is a safe place. He and Doyoung, they might as well just be two sides of the same coin.</p><p>“Yeah, I always prefer to sunbathe before swimming, too,” Jeonghan hums, letting himself relish in the comfort of his talkative tendencies even if it’s <em>Kim Doyoung</em> he’s talking to, swaying his feet across the water surface and watching little waves form with all his fuss, “and here is the best place to do so. The sun seems to burn less here, don’t you think? It’s horrible back in the city, I always end up drenched in sweat.”</p><p>Doyoung takes a second to reply, and when Jeonghan looks at him through the corner of his eye, he sees the muscles in his arms taut with tension where they’re supporting the weight of his body as he leans back on his palms. It makes him wonder if he doesn’t want Jeonghan to talk to him, and for some unnameable reason, the worry ties itself into a knot at the pit of his stomach and screams silently into the cavern of his chest.</p><p>Doyoung speaks soon enough, though, and the knot in Jeonghan dissolves—fever dreams under the summer morning sun. “Yeah, summer in the city sounds like the worst nightmare there can be. Jaehyun says some days it’s impossible to go out until dusk, with how hot it gets.”</p><p>Jeonghan sometimes forgets that they know the same people back in college. It comes from years of avoidance and silent wars, but when said out loud, it sounds as pointless as it is; some things are better left in the past, Jeonghan has always thought. “Man, you have no idea how sunburnt Seokmin got last year. It was crazy.”</p><p>At that Doyoung laughs, loud and relaxed, and the sound echoes around the open emptiness of the place; carries itself through the meadow and leaves Jeonghan wondering, brows threatening to cinch in confusion, if he’s really been wrong about Doyoung all this time. Someone with such a beautiful laugh, rejoicing himself in silly anecdotes told by him—he might not be as cold as Jeonghan has always thought him to be.</p><p>“What hasn’t happened to Seokmin in the past few years? He’s always getting himself in some sort of trouble,” Doyoung grins with a shake of his head. He sighs, long and heavy for a split second, and then finally, <em>finally</em> turns to look at Jeonghan, and it feels like they’re just seeing each other for the first time now. Jeonghan is so used to the static silence and darting eyes that existing in the same reality truly feels foreign by now. “Hey, by the way, where’s Joshua Hong? When Jeno said his brother and yours would be coming I figured he would, too.”</p><p>It’s Jeonghan’s turn to look away.</p><p>Everybody calls his best friend Joshua, but Jeonghan prefers to call him Jisoo. <em>“It’s more special if I’m the only one that does, don’t you think?”</em> he said when they were eight, and it’s been like that since then—some things are better left unquestioned, that too Jeonghan has learnt.</p><p>“He’s playing tennis with Johnny, I think,” Jeonghan says, steering away from crippling thoughts.</p><p>He and Jisoo come in a pack, anyone in town would tell if they were to be asked; best friends since childhood, growing up into brothers tied at the hip, no Jisoo without a Jeonghan to drive him crazy and no Jeonghan without Jisoo to steer his path.</p><p>He and Jisoo also dated when they were sixteen, and he remembers it with the blur that comes with all things forced by sheer force of will—first kisses and awkward touches, and the dawning realisation that they were not each other’s to have; that best friends becoming lovers was too beautiful of a story for him to have. It has taken Jeonghan years to come to terms with that fact, to stop considering it a failure that he and Jisoo could never get it to work, to allow himself to celebrate Seungcheol liking Jisoo in the way Jeonghan wishes he could’ve ever brought himself to.</p><p>It is something about desperately aiming at succeeding; it is something about being perfect inside an imaginary world too beautiful to ever be real, something about having what everyone would dream to have.</p><p>Jeonghan’s got a feeling Doyoung understands what it’s like to be like that, given their history, stupid competitiveness and superiority complexes putting them on a constant race against each other to see who made it the best at the end.</p><p>Doyoung also tried and failed at being in love with his best friend back in the day, the couple they made always filling people’s mouths alongside Jeonghan’s with Jisoo; a failure they both share in their resumes, of aiming for perfection and being rewarded with a neverending kind of ache. It’s because of it that he asks him, then, voice soft where it would’ve usually been nagging, “Why didn’t Lee Taeyong come, too? I see Donghyuck over there.”</p><p>Doyoung’s body hunches back with the force of the sigh he lets out. He runs an idle hand over his face, fingers pressing in between his eyes for a second as if to relieve a headache, says, “He’s on a… <em>date</em> with Baekhyun, cause his parents aren’t home today. You can figure out the rest.”</p><p>It pulls a laugh out of Jeonghan, the utter honesty of Doyoung’s words surprising in a good sort of way. <em>Friendly</em>, almost, a confession not often told to anyone.</p><p>He wonders if starting to acknowledge each other has opened a door of some sorts, from the dimension where they were to the one in which they live now. He wonders if this has been where destiny seems to have always been dragging them towards—a place where they can coexist and not challenge each other on everything they are, gentle friendship in the place where there has always been distaste.</p><p>“At least our brothers’ dates are always like this and not like <em>that</em>,” Jeonghan giggles, head motioning towards where Seungkwan is once again plastered to Hansol’s back, Jeno mirroring himself on Jaemin’s, Mark and Donghyuck swimming towards the place where the river curves out of their view probably to make the most out of the fact that their brothers are not there to watch over them today. Then, after a beat,  “I don’t ever want them to grow up, they’re so cute like this.”</p><p>Doyoung chuckles and nods, staring fondly at the way Jeno presses a small kiss to Jaemin’s temple, tasting freshwater where it drips down his face, “They <em>are</em> so damn cute, it’s almost disgusting sometimes. It’s like they’re made for each other, like your brother and Hansol. They’re lucky kids, aren’t they.”</p><p>“They really are.”</p><p>The first time Jeonghan realises he likes boys, the world ends. He remembers it clearly, still as bittersweet as it was back then, the knowledge of a weight he would always have to carry after the exact second in which he first wonders how kissing one of the kids a couple years older than him would feel, after the moment when he understands that this is not something that he will get to hide and ignore forever while it sits deep in his ribcage.</p><p>Liking boys in a town like theirs is not easy, either, and Jeonghan might not have talked to Kim Doyoung in ages, but he knows it was the same for him back then—the weight on the chest, the shame on the bags under their eyes from sleepless nights full of worries, fear that dissolved when they dared to tell their parents and their friends and the world surprisingly didn’t end.</p><p>He also knows that not everyone’s had it that easy, that acceptance is sadly not something that comes as a given; and that they had to fight to keep the wolves at bay when word got out, too, when they got tired of hiding behind a mask that took away a great part of what they are. He’s still grateful they’ve managed to receive it, anyways—love and acceptance, coming hand in hand with friends and home.</p><p>All in all, Jeonghan learns love the way one learns how to read: the alphabet first—<em>how would it feel to kiss him, I would like to hold his hand</em>—, syllables second—<em>Jisoo is soft and kind, loving him feels safe, yet he will never be more than a friend</em>—, full on sentences last—<em>I can’t feel it but I can see, </em>the way tender touches and loving glances are shared, not his to have but his to witness, to understand, to want.</p><p>The first time Jeonghan realises he likes boys, the world ends. But in the morning, when most of his friends confess to having been feeling the same way for longer than they’ve felt ready to admit, it starts all over again.</p><p>It is both a blessing and a curse, being tied together by a common fear and finding peace with it together as well, the bond of trust and time unbreakable, the laws of attraction often tying people belonging to the same community they are a part of in ways that are more surprising than not.</p><p>They don’t talk about it, but in the comfortable silence they fall into, Jeonghan knows Doyoung thinks the same too. <em>We’ve really always been in the same team</em>, none of them will dare to say, <em>thank you for fighting; I couldn’t have done it without you by my side</em>.</p><p>“Hey,” Doyoung says after a long while, and when Jeonghan looks at him, the smile on his face is genuine—some kind of camaraderie in there, a gentleness that’s never been for him before, “wanna go bother them for a while? We should tell them to stop rubbing on our faces the fact that we’re <em>very much</em> single, shouldn’t we?”</p><p>It’s not easy being them in a town like theirs. Still, Jeonghan wouldn’t have it any other way.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>The lavender fields extending towards the mountains’ feet from the outskirts of the town have always felt like the perfect place for spiritual rest for Doyoung.</p><p>It is not often that he gets to come here to relax on his own, when summer comes and flowers bloom in all their lilac splendour, sweet smell carried through by the breeze and tugging away at the loose knots of worry inside his chest, made out of all the things he never has time to think about but that still stack themselves on a pile and don’t let him rest. Taeyong often offers to tag along when Doyoung mentions wanting to go, and the afternoons when they both come usually end up with reminiscences of an old life and tear stains on their cheeks—all the things they wish they could change, wrong decisions and knowledge of their souls, overwhelmingly huge when spoken out loud.</p><p>Still, sometimes Doyoung prefers to come over on his own. It hasn’t been long since he’s learnt the calm that comes with solitude, the often ignored need of being alone and leaving your mind blank so you can feel everything, see life with clear eyes, understand without wanting to tear yourself apart. Once he did, though, he started to crave it in moments like these, when spending all his days surrounded by his friends and his family and his <em>newfound</em> friends turns into him ignoring his own self, so absorbed by having fun and enjoying not being alone that he forgets there’s something inside him that requires attention, care, watering not unlike the crops next to which he sits.</p><p>Today is one of those days, and so Doyoung turns on airplane mode on his phone before pushing it into the bottom of his bag and gets on his way towards his most beloved part of town.</p><p>His favourite spot to lay down is the narrow stretch of bare land separating a field from another, where he can stretch out his blanket and place down his bag, heavy with the weight of a worn-out book he doesn’t know if he’ll get to start reading before dusk. When he sits, lavender in full bloom surrounds him from all angles, and when the time comes, if he turns and faces the East, he will have the most precious view of sunset there is in the whole entire world—the sky turning as lilac as the flowers rising towards the clouds from their spot on the land, orange hues and cold blues to remind one of the beauty of being alive.</p><p>Doyoung has been laying on his back and watching the clouds move across the sky for thirteen minutes when he hears steps approaching him from behind. The sound startles him out of his haze and sets his body into alertness, wondering if it is one of the landowners coming to reprimand him for walking on the fields or if he’s about to get robbed in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>Instead of any of those, when he whips his head around with fearful eyes, he is met with the sight of an equally surprised Yoon Jeonghan, camera hanging off his neck and fingers clutching the strap of his bag while he pulls on his bike with the other hand.</p><p>“Oh, it’s you,” Doyoung heaves out an anxious laugh, shaking his head as if to wipe away the nervous prickling at the tips of his fingers, “dude, you scared me!”</p><p>“Well, <em>you</em> scared me too!” Jeonghan whines, but there’s a smile on his lips. Doyoung wonders when they went from static silence to whatever it is that they have now—a friendship of some sorts, coexistence falling more towards camaraderie than war, armistice in the most peaceful of ways. “I didn’t know you’d be here today.”</p><p>“I could say the same about you,” Doyoung huffs, but he’s subconsciously already scooting over to leave an empty spot beside him on his blanket, a silent offering to Jeonghan to sit next to him if he wants, “I didn’t tell anyone I was coming, actually. I felt like being alone for a while.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jeonghan muses, head tilted to the side, “I can go sit somewhere else if you want.”</p><p>Doyoung starts shaking his head even before he’s finished his sentence, and Jeonghan hums to himself, carefully leaving his bike to rest on the ground before moving to sit next to Doyoung—and rarely enough, as they have come to understand this summer, they’re not as far away as they’d always believed themselves to be. “It’s all fine,” Doyoung tells him, strangely aware of the way their shoulders brush as Jeonghan makes himself comfortable next to him, “I’ve already been here for a while anyways.”</p><p>They fall into a comfortable silence then, with Jeonghan tapping away at his phone and Doyoung reorganising the stuff messily thrown inside his bag, and it gives him time, really, to wonder about the absurdity of it all.</p><p>Yoon Jeonghan has never been Doyoung’s friend. They could call each other rivals once, maybe, when they were little enough to ignore the magnitude of said word; strangers at most, later, crossing paths in a foreign city and not daring to even say hello, pointless resentment rotting away at some hidden corner of their chests, everlasting as the kiss of a fire flame.</p><p>Doyoung doesn’t know what they are now. He knows that their friends are friends with each other, and that their brothers are as inseparable as they are with their own best friends. He knows that he talked to Jeonghan drunk off his ass on the first summer night of this year, and that they danced together and shared gossip like there had never been a wall in between them in the first place. He knows that they met at the river and pretended for nothing to stand in their way, and that it had felt as natural as letting the current wash their prejudices away, <em>“you’re not as uptight as I believed you to be”</em>, <em>“I never thought you’d direct a word to me”</em>, a conversation about their past dripping with honesty while they swam together that left Doyoung feeling kind of empty after realising the pointlessness of it all. Jeonghan is a nice boy, not so different from him, and having believed himself to hate him for so long; it had just been proven wrong for the both of them after addressing the elephant in the room, after laughing it all off, signing a peace Versailles should be jealous of.</p><p>He guesses that friends would probably be the most appropriate word for themselves, now. A couple of weeks have gone by since the river conversation, and though they don’t really try to, their groups usually end up going to the same places on the same days. It’s the perk of living in a town like theirs—there’s not much where to choose from. It’s still alright—Taeyong teases Doyoung about it endlessly,<em> “I told you you’d make great friends!”</em>, and Ten is delighted to get drunk with Soonyoung on Wednesday nights in his backyard under the stars and Kun talks about music with Lee Jihoon and everything is fine.</p><p>In these weeks, Doyoung has also found out that Jeonghan enjoys the lavender fields as much as he does, finding him laying amidst the blooming flowers in more than one occasion now; and surprisingly enough, for the first time in so, so long, the coincidence does not stir rage inside his belly nor the thought that Jeonghan is <em>copying</em> his favourite place. Instead, it makes Doyoung smile—they’re not so different, maybe they could really make a pretty good team.</p><p>“I came to take pictures of the sunset today,” Jeonghan says then, interrupting their calm. His crooked fingers are pressing buttons on the back of his camera, adjusting the settings to better catch the view, “for when I can’t see it back in the city. The buildings surrounding the dorms are <em>too fucking tall</em>, honestly.”</p><p>Doyoung hums in agreement, leaning back on his elbows to look at the sky once again. The meadow trembles with the start of a breeze, lavender scent carrying through with its sweetness, healing smell for contaminated souls; the countryside and the city, eternally quarrelling inside Doyoung’s own chest.</p><p>“They are,” Doyoung concedes, taking a deep breath as he examines their surroundings, “everything is so… big, back there. I’ve been trying for so long, but I honestly don’t think I’m used to it yet, you know?”</p><p>Jeonghan sighs, a sound that is as heavy as it is sad, and he leaves his camera to rest atop his thighs before wrapping his arms around his bent knees, making himself small as he too takes in the view. “You know what,” he starts, in the sort of tone often reserved for soul-wrecking confessions, “when I left home—my family, the town, all of this, I thought I was doing what was best. It’s what we talked about that one day, wanting to be perfect, all of that stuff. And I told myself that I would love it at the city, so much that I would never want to come back here,” he laughs humorlessly, rolling back his shoulders until they ease their tension with a muffled <em>crack</em>, “and for a while I did. I had so much fun, met people, you know it all. But then… then I realised that I wasn’t really myself when I was there, that I wanted to be so <em>independent</em>, so <em>different</em> that it felt like I was truly someone else. And then I would call home, or talk to Jisoo, or see our group chat with the rest and… I guess it tugged somewhere inside me, cause I suddenly started craving to come back.”</p><p>Lavender and Doyoung, they’re the only witnesses to Jeonghan’s revelation. The flowers keep trembling under the caress of the soft wind, awaiting for sunset. Doyoung takes in a deep breath and feels Jeonghan’s words travelling through his bloodstream like a drug; shapeless courage, a newfound kind of understanding carrying through his pulse.</p><p>“You have no idea how much I can relate to that,” Doyoung sighs, head tilted to the side as he stares at the horizon, the Sun already hanging low, “the city is nice, you know. I like living with my flatmates, I like getting to do stuff that I would <em>never</em> get to do here, but—” Jeonghan’s eyes feel piercing on the side of his face, but the dam has been broken and it all pours out in an unafraid stream— “everything is so… <em>uncertain</em> there, right? Like, I feel like I’m never going to find purpose cause, I don’t know. Everything is so open and there are so many different options that it feels overwhelming sometimes,” Doyoung shakes his head, as if trying to clear up his thoughts, “But here… I always talk about this with Taeyong, about how this town feels like a safe place to me, like I don’t have to try so hard. And, you know, Yongie goes to the college in the capital every day and comes back home at night, and he says he wouldn’t trade living here for the world, and it makes me think… it makes me wonder if I did right when I left. If I should have stayed home. It’s not… I wouldn’t be who I am today if I had done it, but at this point I’m not so sure it would have been a bad thing.”</p><p>Silence wraps itself around them after Doyoung stops talking—comforting in its quietness, the only sound that of their breaths mingling with the scented breeze.</p><p>It is Jeonghan that breaks it after a short while, moving to sit up on his knees so he can turn towards the East, where the sun is starting to set, camera held halfway up to his eyes as he gets ready to snap his photographs.</p><p>“You know, Doyoung,” he says, and his voice sounds light, as if he’d just taken off a huge weight off his chest, “in literature, this talk would probably fall into one of those clichés. <em>Beatus Ille</em>, the countryside life exalted above the city. And I think you and I are the same, cause I also worry about it all, but then… then sometimes I think that it doesn’t have to be black or white. That there can be a grey, as long as I stop telling myself that liking home is wrong. That having grown up here is something to be ashamed of, cause it really is not, don’t you think?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Doyoung is quick to respond, “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”</p><p>“Me either,” Jeonghan smiles, and his hair—dyed caramel now—falls over his eyes, “that’s why I’ve started to come to terms with the fact that I cannot reject my past. That I, <em>us all</em>, did what we did, and it’s all fine. And that it’s okay to want to return home, because it will <em>always be our home</em>, and even if we’re far… even when we’re at the city and everything is so different from this, we’re always gonna carry a part of this with us. And I think that’s beautiful, sort of poetic in a way, don’t you think so too?”</p><p>Jeonghan speaks the words as if they were nothing, but they leave Doyoung struggling to find his own. It all hits so close to his own heart that it should be unsettling—seeing yourself in the person you’ve made yourself believe to dislike for years on end. “Dude, you really did well by choosing to major in Literature,” is what he says instead, and it draws a laugh out of Jeonghan that is so loud it feels almost offensive in the quietness of the field.</p><p>“Thanks,” Jeonghan replies with a soft giggle, and his tone is teasing when he says, “I’m glad I can come to this agreement with a Biology major like yourself.”</p><p>Doyoung laughs, chest opening and welcoming the warmth, feeling lighter than he has in years. He guesses it comes from getting out the weight accumulating inside your ribcage for years. He guesses it comes from forgiveness and returning to a home in which he now more than ever feels to belong.</p><p>Jeonghan is still smiling when he finally focuses on capturing the sunset view through the lens of his camera—lips pursed in concentration, one eye closed while the other searches for the prettiest angle of the sun disappearing behind the far horizon line of the meadow, stars already beginning to dot the darkening sky while the Moon awaits to take her place as the queen of night to watch over the fields.</p><p>The golden light of dusk shines gently over Jeonghan’s face when he pulls the camera away from his eyes to stare at the photographs he’s taken, and for a moment Doyoung is awestruck by the beauty of the picture he makes, with his messy hair and his deep brown eyes illuminated by the last rays of daylight.</p><p>The thought only lasts a few seconds, flickering with the adrenaline of walking past a forbidden turn, but it makes an indent on Doyoung’s heart he’s afraid he won’t know how to polish.</p><p>In a desperate quest to drive it away from his brain, he plasters on another genuine smile and says, “Hey, Jeonghan,” drawing the attention of the other like a magnet, “could you send those pictures to my phone, maybe? I would like to have them too, if it’s okay with you.”</p><p>Jeonghan grins, smile blooming fuller than the lavender flowers surrounding them, now dulled blue under the dimming light of an ending day. “Of course,” he nods, “here, put your number on my phone and I will send them to you.”</p><p>It’s almost the middle of summer, a few weeks already gone by to never come back; but for Doyoung, today feels like a beginning of sorts.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>unknown number</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>[11 pictures attached]</em>
</p><p>❤️</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>thank you !!!!!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>omg when did you take that pic of me it looks so nice</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>haha you were kinda lost in your thoughts and the lighting was nice lol</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you can post it on insta if you want!!</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p><em>wow thank you !!!! </em>🥺</p><p>
  <em>i’ll give you credits hehe</em>
</p><p>😊</p><p> </p>
<h2>✉︎</h2><p> </p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>jihoon says that since you’re running late you gotta bring the ice haha</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>it’s not my fault !! jeno’s been in the bathroom for AGES now</em>
</p><p>
  <em>do NOT start drinking without me or i’ll be mad</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>[picture attached] </em>
</p><p>🙄</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>wtf</em>
</p><p>
  <em>why is your drink pink</em>
</p><p>
  <em>also your glittery eyeshadow is so cute omg</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>it’s strawberry cider!!!</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>shit i wanna try that</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p><em>bring the ice and there might be some left for when you arrive lol</em> 😘</p><p> </p>
<h2>✉︎</h2><p> </p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>jeonghan</em>
</p><p>
  <em>dude lol this might sound weird but</em>
</p><p>
  <em>were joshua and seungcheol like… flirting last night or was it just me?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>i don’t remember much from last night tbh lol it was wild</em>
</p><p>
  <em>but yeah they probably were… they’ve been flirting for a while actually</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i’m just waiting for one of them to make a move they’re so TIRING</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yeah we were all pretty wasted hahaha</em>
</p><p>
  <em>but omgggg really??? i didn’t know !!!</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>haha yeah they started it like, idk a little less than a year ago or something like that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>also, i might be imagining things but i think i saw johnny suh and ten being quite… close to each other last night???</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>oh MAN</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i can’t talk about this without a beer it gives me a headache</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>lol aren’t you hungover???</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>kim doyoung</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yeah and? everybody knows beer is the cure for hangovers !!! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>you up to grab one at the bar behind the square? i’ll tell you all i know</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yoon jeonghan</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>the things i do for gossip</em>
</p><p> </p>
<h2>✉︎</h2><p> </p><p>
  <strong>yongie </strong>
  <strong>(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>baekhyun says he saw you and jeonghan at the bar this afternoon</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i knew you get along w him now but omg this is news ??? why don’t you tell me anything !!!</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doie </strong>
  <strong>(</strong>
  <strong>ꈍᴗꈍ)♡</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>ffs are you dating him already or not</em>
</p><p>
  <em>hahaha don’t be dramaticccccc</em>
</p><p>
  <em>we’re… friends i guess</em>
</p><p>
  <em>he’s not as stupid as i thought</em>
</p><p>
  <em>he’s kinda really fucking nice actually</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yongie </strong>
  <strong>(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>no i’m not</em>
</p><p>
  <em>jesus fuck </em>
</p><p>
  <em>so i was right all along</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doie </strong>
  <strong>(</strong>
  <strong>ꈍᴗꈍ)♡</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>???</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yongie </strong>
  <strong>(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>you fight him because you like him !! rings a bell ?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doie </strong>
  <strong>(</strong>
  <strong>ꈍᴗꈍ)♡</strong>
</p><p>
  <em> fuck you</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yongie </strong>
  <strong>(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)</strong>
</p><p><em>you wish</em> ❤️</p><p>
  <em>i am right tho</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doie </strong>
  <strong>(</strong>
  <strong>ꈍᴗꈍ)♡</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>you’re sick</em>
</p><p>
  <em> i don’t like him </em>
</p><p>
  <em>like that, i mean</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i think</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>yongie </strong>
  <strong>(❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>YOU THINK ?!?!?!?!?!!!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>DAMNNNNNNNNNNN say hi to ten i’m screenshotting the shit out of this</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doie </strong>
  <strong>(</strong>
  <strong>ꈍᴗꈍ)♡</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE</em>
</p><p>
  <em>TAEYONG</em>
</p><p>
  <em> TAEYONG.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>oh my god i fucking hate you</em>
</p><p>[Your contact yongie (❁ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈) has been blocked.]</p><p> </p>
<h2>✉︎</h2><p> </p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>okay this is an intervention</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>a what</em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>you don’t get to play dumb with me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>what’s up with your last ig post ????</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>lol do i really look that ugly jisoo</em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>I SAID DON’T PLAY DUMB !!!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you went to take pictures with kim doyoung.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>uh yeah? </em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>and ???</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>what do you mean and? you know i’ve been spending time with him</em>
</p><p>
  <em>OMG ARE YOU JEALOUS ???? jisoo baby no !! you’re the only one for me !!!!</em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>shut up.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you captioned it “and if you're ever tired of bеing known for who you know, you know, you'll always know me”. after uploading a handful of pics of doyoung to your stories. and you BOTH love taylor swift and that specific song, so i’m sure as hell you /know/ what that means.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>i’m really not following what you’re trying to say </em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>fine. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>you brought this upon yourself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i’ll be clear:</em>
</p><p>
  <em>YOU LIKE DOYOUNG.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>uh what.</em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>dude honestly don’t put up a fight this time</em>
</p><p>
  <em>it’s all fine we all think you do anyways</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>YOU ALL WHAT? DO YOU TALK BEHIND MY BACK NOW??</em>
</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>
  <em>you know what</em>
</p><p>
  <em>don’t say anything</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i’m taking your lack of rejection as a yes anyways lol</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>hannie </strong>
  <strong>✧˖*°࿐</strong>
</p><p>🗿</p><p><strong>joshuji </strong><strong>ฅ</strong><strong>^•</strong>ﻌ<strong>•^</strong><strong>ฅ</strong></p><p>👨❤️💋👨</p><p> </p>
<h2>✉︎</h2><p> </p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yooo han</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>jeonghan 👼🏼</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yesss?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>are you going to the festival in jun and kun’s village tomorrow?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>jeonghan 👼🏼</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yeah!!!! we all are, jun’s so excited about it</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>greattttt</em>
</p><p>
  <em>yepp kun is too !!!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>do you wanna buy your alcohol with us?? like, your group and mine all together</em>
</p><p>
  <em>it’ll be cheaper like that haha</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>jeonghan 👼🏼</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>man that’s a good idea</em>
</p><p>
  <em>i’ll tell my friends!!! we can go buy them this afternoon when we come back from the river haha</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>ohhh yeah that sounds nice!!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>jeno doesn’t want to come with us btw, he says he’s going to the pool with jaemin</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>jeonghan 👼🏼</strong>
</p><p><em>i’ll tell seungkwan about it then haha he probs won’t want to come with us</em> <em>alone </em>💆</p><p>
  <em>it’ll be a relaxing morning for us alone then huh</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>yeah !!! bring the camera we can take nice pics haha</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>jeonghan 👼🏼</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>will doooo</em>
</p><p>
  <em>see you later &lt;3</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>doyoungie </strong>
  <strong>｡:°ஐ</strong>
</p><p> <em>&lt;3</em></p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>As every stupid idea ever, it comes from a one Kwon Sooyoung.</p><p>“Everyone! Let’s make a circle and play a game!” He calls out loudly, as if they were alone and not surrounded by a couple hundred people on the main (<em>read: only</em>) square of Junhui’s tiny village town. “C’mon, let’s get drunk for real, don’t be so weak!”</p><p>Most of the attendants to the village’s annual festival, including a pretty wasted Soonyoung, are already way further than <em>drunk for real</em>, Jeonghan would dare say. The place is not that small—although it’s much smaller than the main square in their their town, which doesn’t come as a surprise when he reminds himself that their home actually <em>is</em> the biggest town among the one surrounding it—, but packed with young people coming from all around the neighbouring towns as it is, it feels minuscule.</p><p>There are plenty of food and drink stands framing the perimeter of the square, where people queue for snacks to munch on so as to dwindle a little the effect of the alcohol they’ve been consuming for the best part of the evening now. Either way, tonight, for Jeonghan’s and Doyoung’s friend groups, comes down to this: four plastic bags filled with bottles full of a rather dangerous mix of drinks placed down onto the ground and <em>never</em> out of their sight, ice slowly melting away inside the bags as they talk, and them leaning into each other while they drink and laugh, dancing along to the music playing from the speakers placed just outside the village’s main building and making memories they will most likely not remember in the morning.</p><p>“What do you mean let’s get drunk? You’re already fucking gone,” Jihoon scoffs at Soonyoung’s proposal, and it makes Yuta laugh where he stands next to him, plastic glass filled halfway with their favourite deadly combination of vodka, juice, liquors and energy drinks.</p><p>“No, let’s play! We came here to have fun, didn’t we?” Ten grins, already pulling Seungcheol and Taeyong into the disfigured circle they’re trying to make despite their protests.</p><p>“Yeah! The night’s still young, c’mon,” Kun nods, and his voice cracks halfway in a clear show of the level of drunkenness he’s already on—<em>“our village’s festival is crazy, you can ask Kun about it too,”</em> Junhui had assured Jeonghan a week prior, <em>“if you’re not drunk before the sun sets you’re definitely doing something wrong”</em>.</p><p>It’s been a while since the sun disappeared from the sky, leaving room for a bright night sky presided by a full moon and its precious assortment of stars; and by now, it is safe to say that Jeonghan is quite definitely buzzing with the warm energy that alcohol and laughter leave at their wake through his veins.</p><p>Although there might be a little bit more to it. He can never be sure, when it comes to this.</p><p>Next to him, frame shaking with the force of the cutest fit of giggles Jeonghan has ever witnessed, Kim Doyoung is <em>definitely</em> on one of those nights where alcohol works its magic most beautifully on him—rosy cheeks, half-closed eyes; easy laugh, uncoordinated swats at Jeonghan’s arm after a particularly bad joke, hips swaying easily when they all went dancing before; full red, awfully kissable lips, Jeonghan’s latest recurrent dream.</p><p>The thought is, life-changingly enough, not foreign to Jeonghan, for it’s been plaguing his mind for weeks on end now, and it is this fact that should probably worry him the most; but in his current state, where common sense goes down the drain as tipsiness gets ahold of his brain, it’s virtually impossible to chase it away.</p><p><em>Ignis amoris</em>, one of his professors once said, <em>love as an inner flame</em>. Jeonghan’s been burning all this summer, and not so much of it comes from the sun.</p><p>“This is a bad idea,” Doyoung whines next to his ear, then, “if Ten wants to do it it’s just gonna be so <em>wrong</em>.”</p><p>The proximity makes Jeonghan’s skin prickle, and not in an unpleasant way.</p><p>“You’re so drunk,” Jeonghan giggles instead, as if he weren’t feeling the same, steadying Doyoung with a hand on his elbow when he wobbles while moving to become part of the circle.</p><p>“So are you,” Doyoung huffs, ponting an accusatory finger at Jeonghan’s face, “but you’re cute.”</p><p>Jeonghan blames the fire on his cheeks on the humid summer air and the alcohol in his veins. If his heart skips a beat, it is his secret to keep. “I—”</p><p>“Are you all ready? Yes. Okay! Ten, truth or dare!” Soonyoung claims, effectively stopping Jeonghan from running his mouth while Johnny squats to put another ice cube inside his glass.</p><p>“Me?” Ten startles, squinting his eyes as he thinks, “hmm, dare!”</p><p>“Soonyoung, remember we’re in public, don’t—” Seungcheol tries to warn, watching chaos approach from afar, but it all falls on deaf ears.</p><p>“Drink a shot off Johnny’s collarbone,” Soonyoung smirks.</p><p>The choir their laughter makes doesn’t echo, for they’re out in the open surrounded by hundreds of people laughing just the same, but it resonates inside Jeonghan’s ribcage in a tune that goes something like this: <em>this is home</em>, along with his heartbeat, <em>not a place but them, this is where you belong</em>. Laughter tastes sweet. Doyoung’s hand gripping his when he hears the dare tastes of relief.</p><p>Johnny’s cheeks flare red, but before he has time to look for an excuse Ten is already wrapping his arm around his neck, free hand holding what’s left of a half empty bottle of tequila. “C’mon, this is nothing! Tilt your head, will you?” He purrs, liquid courage in his veins as he ghosts his fingers over Johnny’s skin.</p><p>For some reason, it feels oddly intruding to watch them do it, friends or not, eternal crushes and ruined chances rising up from ashes all over again. Jeonghan knows about it because Doyoung has told him about it all—and so he hopes for the moment where they make peace with their feelings to come soon. Who knows what he’d do, to be able to make it with his very own.</p><p>“Gross,” Yuta scrunches up his nose, blowing away the smoke of his cigarette before turning to Taeyong, “Yong, truth or dare?”</p><p>“Oh God, truth,” Taeyong says, absolutely horrorized at the way Ten refuses to pull his lips away from where they’re whispering something in a very flushed Johnny’s ear, the shot he was dared to drink long gone, “Dude, go make out somewhere else, we <em>all</em> know you’ve been dying to do it for ages, c’mon!”</p><p>“Shut up,” Ten grunts, but Johnny’s hand goes to squeeze his waist and it works at calming him down, “you’re just the same with Baekhyun hyung and—”</p><p>“Alright guys, Taeyong, truth! How many people from this group have you kissed,” Kun pipes up while he pours himself another drink.</p><p>“Are you for real? You’re all so horrible, you already know!” Taeyong whines, “it’s four.”</p><p>“Oh? Who?” Jisoo grins, and Jeonghan has to stop himself from rolling his eyes. <em>As if you don’t know</em>, he thinks to himself, and he is bitter for reasons he doesn’t really want to dwell on too much.</p><p>“Really?” Taeyong buries his face in his hands, cheeks flushing red, “Ugh, fine. Johnny, Yuta, Ten and Doie, of course. We used to date and you all know it!”</p><p>Jeonghan feels Doyoung tense up for a moment where he’s got his arm pressed against his own, and he swallows down the urge to wrap his arm around his waist to bring him closer, the need to become some sort of source of comfort for him drowning down his heart.</p><p>Dating Taeyong while Jeonghan dated Jisoo, it was just <em>another one of those times</em>, as they have started to name the not-so-awful memories of a bittersweet past. Jeonghan now realises that they should’ve never been so competitive, for by now he is almost sure there is no other pair that would have made a better team than they do.</p><p>“Doyoung, c’mon, oh you’re so funny when you’re drunk,” Jihoon speaks next, “truth or dare?”</p><p>“Me?” Doyoung pouts, vowels slurring, and Jeonghan aches, “Truth, I don’t trust any of you with your dares!”</p><p>“Oh, I’ve got a good one for him!” Ten smirks—a gesture Jeonghan knows Doyoung perceives as <em>terrifying</em>, if only for how his pouty façade morphs into horror at the sound of his voice, “In a range from zero to ten, how handsome would you say Jeonghan is?”</p><p>Jeonghan feels fire licking up from the base of his neck up to the apples of his cheeks, soft pink turning a fiery red he knows he can no longer blame on the summer heat. The sudden rush of embarrassment brought by the way all of their friends turn to stare at him makes him feel hot all over, enough for him to discard the oversized denim jacket he’d put on when the night had brought with itself the coolest of summer breezes.</p><p>There was a time when Jeonghan wouldn’t have been bothered by a question of this kind, for he knows himself pretty enough to die for if one were willing enough. That time, he reasons now, with alcohol making his brain take directions it wouldn’t dare to take under normal circumstances, is probably not gone at all. In the cusp of this festive summer night, realisation dawns upon him so sweetly that he doesn’t even have time to be surprised, for the truth’s already been clear in his chest ever since that one time at Ten’s house weeks ago.</p><p>It’s all about Doyoung, and what he thinks and what he feels, if he’d look at Jeonghan the way he looks at him. It’s all about Jeonghan, wanting Doyoung to be his, greedier than the demons clawing at the heart inside his ribcage.</p><p>“Jeonghannie?” Doyoung giggles, but Jeonghan knows to recognise the nervousness wrapping itself thick around his tone, sees it in the way he withdraws his arm where it was brushing his own a mere second ago, “c’mon Ten, this question is <em>silly</em>, we all have eyes!”</p><p>“Yeah, but I wanna know what <em>you</em> think, Doie,” Ten teases, and Jeonghan wonders if he will make it out alive this time, “from zero to ten or you’ll have to down <em>Yuta’s</em> drink, c’mon, one, two, <em>thr—</em>“</p><p>“Fine!” Doyoung whines, and even though Jeonghan tries to search for his gaze, to confirm with his eyes what he hears, he turns his head away and takes a deep breath before daring to speak, “ten. Out of ten. Hundredth percent, top of the top, I don’t think there’s anyone prettier, more beautiful than him. That’s it.”</p><p>A little laugh is punched out of Jeonghan’s chest. It sounds manic to his own ears. In the aftermath, he tries to get Doyoung to look at him, catches sight of his reddened cheeks and fears he will faint before getting to talk to him, and then Taeyong rolls his eyes as if he were more tired than Atlas himself after carrying the world on his shoulders and claims,</p><p>“Great, now, Jeonghan, dare!” Not even giving Jeonghan the chance to <em>protest</em>, “Go talk with Doyoung <em>alone</em> behind the stands for ten minutes, c’mon.”</p><p>It all unfolds like an action movie of some sorts—Doyoung’s head snaps up almost violently, desperately searching for Taeyong’s gaze as if suddenly hit by a murder streak, and then Seungcheol is quite literally <em>dragging </em>Jeonghan away from the group while Johnny does the same with Doyoung.</p><p>It all feels so surreal that Jeonghan doesn’t even have it in him to react. By the time he comes to his senses, they’re already being left alone at the grimy back of a burger stand, Johnny and Seungcheol laughing as they walk away.</p><p>“You’re fucking crazy!” Doyoung is yelling, cheeks beet red as he fumes at Johnny’s back, “Go kiss Ten, why don’t you, you asshole!”</p><p>“Will fucking do man!” Johnny replies from afar, and Jeonghan can tell he’s grinning this time.</p><p>Doyoung’s shoulders sag in defeat when he and Seungcheol disappear back into the crowd, and when he turns around to stare at Jeonghan with wide eyes and his lip worried between his teeth, Jeonghan becomes painfully aware of how quiet this side of the square is compared to where they’d been before.</p><p>“They’re silly,” Jeonghan tries to break the static silence that’s fallen upon them after months of not knowing how to stop talking and telling and giving parts of themselves away to each other, “woah, why does this feel so awkward?”</p><p>Doyoung’s eyes shift down towards the ground, avoiding Jeonghan’s open face, and it feels a little bit wounding on his racing heart.</p><p>“Probably cause I feel like all the alcohol’s left my body all of a sudden,” Doyoung says, blinking as if to clear up his thoughts, “and I <em>did</em> say you’re the most beautiful boy in the world, so.”</p><p>When Doyoung finally, <em>finally</em> lifts his gaze from his feet, Jeonghan feels his ears burn at the way honesty is painted all over his face—as if he were waiting for something and Jeonghan knew what, as if this were the climax to a moment that’s been building up for weeks on end now.</p><p>In the back of his head, Jeonghan knows he should probably run—far, far away, back to the city where he can hide behind a mask of indifference and pretend home does not exist, pretend he’s got no feelings for the person he’s forced himself to resent all his life.</p><p>Summer comes and goes, every year round just the same, and it’s never taken anything away from Jeonghan. This year it doesn’t, either, but it brings something he never asked for: Kim Doyoung, and his laugh and his smile, his heart made out of flesh and not stone, and his love for nature and the lavender fields Jeonghan’s always dreamed of writing poetry about. Summer brings him a boy that understands Jeonghan’s deepest concerns and still forgives him, despite <em>all of those times</em> when they tried to tear each other apart, when they left themselves behind just to know themselves the best among them all.</p><p>Jeonghan knows he should run, for the second he lets his guard down, Doyoung will be able to see right through him and there will be no going back—he will leave himself bare before his eyes, for him to take, for him to break; but when a sudden blow of the breeze makes Doyoung’s fringe fall over his eyes, Jeonghan’s hand reaches over to gently move it away as if on instinct, aching to touch, to keep him safe, to keep him warm.</p><p>“You did,” Jeonghan says in the end, “though I gotta say I don’t agree.”</p><p>“Huh?” Doyoung’s eyebrows get drawn together in confusion for a second, “what do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean,” Jeonghan says, even though his brain begs him to <em>run away before it’s too late</em>, “that I think that <em>you</em> are the most beautiful boy on Earth, Doie.”</p><p>Doyoung’s cheeks burn red, his eyelashes brushing repeatedly against hot skin as shyness makes him blink, and his tongue darts out to soothe the marred skin of his bottom lip where he’s dug his teeth in too forcefully.</p><p>“That’s not what you said when you gave me that flower back in kindergarten,” Doyoung teases, soft like a pleasant distant memory, but it’s all gentleness in his voice.</p><p>And Yoon Jeonghan should have run; but in the end, the one summer night that sounded the most promising and the rest of days where he’s let himself admit to loving home and knowing Kim Doyoung come down to this:</p><p>Doyoung’s back is pressed to the metallic wall of this one burger stand, and Jeonghan’s heart is racing, proximity a threat where it should be a privilege. <em>‘What were you so scared of?’</em> Jeonghan asks himself when Doyoung wraps his arms around his neck, his eyes meeting his in a silent confession of what they both already know—<em>I should have done this before, you did not deserve what we’ve put each other through—</em>.</p><p><em>‘What were you so scared of?’</em> Oh, so many, many things. He wouldn’t know where to begin, if he ever were to tell.</p><p>“I think I’m gonna kiss you,” Jeonghan says, and it sounds delirious even to his own ears.</p><p>But Doyoung smiles, wide enough for it to turn his eyes into crescent moons, the dimple on his cheek telling Jeonghan to <em>please</em> caress his skin, make sure he is real, anchor himself to this very moment in time. “I thought you’d <em>never</em> think of it,” he chides, and it takes a thousand weights off Jeonghan’s chest.</p><p>In the end, it’s not Jeonghan that kisses him, nor Doyoung who kisses him either. They meet in the middle, like a sinking boat reaching shore, the gods on their side against all odds. Jeonghan’s hands gain purchase on Doyoung’s shoulders, and Doyoung’s lips are soft and sweet under his own and it feels nothing but <em>right</em>, exactly the way being home should be like: welcoming, a warm hug for the soul, the knowledge that this is <em>safe, safe, safe</em>, despite everything, whatever it is that must come their way.</p><p>The full moon shines bright on the night sky, and so Jeonghan thanks her—it feels nice to have her beauty as a witness to the moment that changes, quite literally, everything.</p><p> </p><p>☼</p><p> </p><p>The inside of the pub in which they sit is buzzing with the kind of atmosphere that you can only really taste during summer in a town like theirs—a big one in comparison to the ones that surround it, but where there is not nearly enough people to fill restaurants and nightclubs on the regular nevertheless; no college to attract young people to liven up the ambient during the school year, a place more reserved to families, full of kids and teens growing into young adults that always seem more destined to leave their home than to anything else.</p><p>Doyoung, just like most of his friends, has always been one of those kids. He grew up wanting nothing but freedom from heavy chains that he now knows did never exist, aching to leave his home for the city if only so he could try to find a truer version of himself, which he did not believe he could ever be if he were to stay.</p><p>Lee Jihoon lets out the loudest, most high-pitched laugh Doyoung has ever heard where he’s sitting right across from him, and for a second he’s scared he’s going to spill his beer jar all over the large wooden table they’re sitting at. “I can’t believe you remember that! Soonyoung had to go to the emergency room because of that incident!”</p><p>He succeeds at taking Doyoung out of his own brain, though, and so he smiles and lets his head rest on Yoon Jeonghan’s shoulder, pressed against his own while his finger draws unintelligible patterns on his jean-clad thigh.</p><p>“Yah, it was not my fault he actually drank the watercolor water! I just said it <em>looked</em> like it would taste of strawberries!” Jeonghan whines, and Doyoung laughs albeit not as energetically as he would like to.</p><p>August is already wrapping up, afternoons shortening and the sun shining a little less warmly, a little more dim. Summer, Doyoung learnt at a very young age, always ends—good or bad, wrong or right. It never used to bother him so much, returning to the city, slipping back into the character he’s by now so used to play.</p><p>But things are different this year, and albeit he knows he’s objectively got no reason to worry, he can’t help but to do so.</p><p>“What’re you thinking about? I can hear the whirls moving from here,” Jeonghan giggles into his ear, then,  and Doyoung rolls his eyes playfully but reaches down to squeeze his hand under the table, thumb caressing the soft, sunkissed skin.</p><p>“Nothing, it’s just,” Doyoung mumbles, taking a long look around the table where <em>all</em> of their friends are sitting tonight—Ten’s leg draped over Johnny’s thigh, Taeyong and Yuta and Jihoon and Soonyoung teasing them for it, Kun and Junhui chatting about the gossip going on around their village while Seungcheol tries to get Jisoo to choose where to go for dinner with him alone next week, “I don’t wanna leave, you know? I can’t remember ever having a summer better than this one.”</p><p>“Isn’t that the thing, though?” Jeonghan smiles, reaching with his other hand to hold Doyoung’s between both his palms, kinder than the stars, “all good things must come to an end, or else they would never be memorable. Nothing lasts forever, cause it would be forgotten if it did. <em>Carpe diem</em> and all that!”</p><p>Doyoung smiles, painfully aware of how utterly <em>enamoured</em> he must seem, and he would like for nothing but to give Jeonghan his heart right here, on a silver plate, all his to keep. It’s ironic, come to think of it, how hard he’d tried to hate him, and how easy it is to learn to love—natural as the water flows and rivers die, always at the sea, at the end of all things.</p><p>“Does that mean you’re not gonna talk to me when we see each other in the city, then?” Doyoung pouts, even though this is a conversation they have <em>definitely</em> had before.</p><p>“Of course! I’ll pretend not to know you, and then go round talking shit about you,” Jeonghan teases, and it makes Doyoung laugh. “<em>Tempus Fugit</em>, baby. Your time is running out!”</p><p>“Are you <em>ever</em> gonna stop with the literary stuff? You’re so sappy—”</p><p>“Hey, so are you two gonna kiss or can we continue with our night?” Ten teases, and Doyoung thinks, not for the first time this week, how thankful Ten should be that he <em>loves </em>him so much.</p><p>“Well, I could very much say the same!” Doyoung says instead, and it makes everyone laugh—a sound that settles itself in between Doyoung’s ribs like a shield, that grows arms and legs to protect his heart and tells him, <em>this will always be your home</em>, like a whisper carried through by the wind, <em>no matter where you are, you will never be alone</em>.</p><p>Seungcheol starts talking about the visit to the city they’ve all been planning for a while, then, and Doyoung lets the excitement of knowing this group to last forever wash over him.</p><p>Underneath the table, Jeonghan hooks his foot around his ankle and gives his hand another squeeze.</p><p>Summer had seemed promising, but winter—it never before sounded this warm.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you so so so much for reading! it makes me so happy that you spend a little time of your day reading this work (ꈍᴗꈍ)♡ please leave kudos and/or comment if you enjoyed this story, and you can find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/hanniecuqui">twt</a> and <a href="https://curiouscat.me/peekatom">cc</a> &lt;3.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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